Whistle and I'll come to thee, boy!
by A.A. Pessimal
Summary: A cautionary tale in four chapters  from the younger days of Mustrum Ridcully and John Hicks.   Warning:- Features scenes of sadism, brutality and PE teaching.
1. The Boys' School

_**Whistle, and he'll come to thee, my lad….**_

_A Discworld short. Inspired by incidental detail in __**Unseen Academicals. **_

One of the lesser-remarked features of Unseen University is that it used to have its own School. Not a School of Study, as in higher-level university departments. A real School.

Back in the day when a trainee Wizard could be identified as young as three or four, a typical member of the new intake might arrive at the University in an over-large and ill-fitting robe it was hoped he would grow into, whilst sucking his thumb and clutching a teddybear.**(1)**

Consequently, the University was forced to maintain its own School, operating at all levels from Nursery to Upper Sixth, as a matter of practical necessity. For like any school child, the magically gifted _still_ had to be taught to read, write and do arithmetic. As however gifted a prospect might be, they were still no bloody good as a Wizard if they couldn't read a spell book. They had to know their Geography of the Disc, so as to be able to tell their Arszt**(2)** from their Elbow**(3)**. They had to know at least the rudiments of alchemy, so as to be able to deal with all that tricky calculation and precise weighing of abstract ingredients for arcane spells.

They also had to be taught, of course, to bloody well behave like young gentlemen and respect their elders.

Mustrum Ridcully, himself a product of this sort of education, had been through the University's Prep School, Remove and Higher School from the age of seven onwards, like the majority of Faculty members, all of whom were in their late sixties or seventies and had known each other since very early childhood.**(4) **Ridcully had not liked the early experience very much – his House Master had been Windle Poons, who, much later, had noted that the little boy with the big sticky-out ears who had cried for his mum in the dorm every night could not possibly be Arch-chancellor. Huh, they must think he was _daft_…**(5)**

Mustrum Ridcully was not a fan of the University's school system. Indeed, he hoped that by the time he stopped being Arch-Chancellor, he would have ended it completely. Accepting, with a sort of grim happiness, that his own childhood experiences had prejudiced him, Ridcully preferred a far more humane way of dealing with a four-year-old who was showing signs of magic. Rather than uproot the blasted infant from home and family and drag them off to a cold dorm, Ridcully advocated leaving the child with its parents, but making sure a locally based Wizard had been alerted to act as magical monitor. Lancre presented a problem, yes, but the Witches kept an eye out and did the pastoral thing with the bemused parents of young gels who were suffering from the onset of magic. If he knew Esme, she'd bloody well _know_ the instant any child in her parish, male or female, displayed signs of magic and she'd deal with it. Besides, she'd sent promising pupils to the University before.**(6)**

_No, keep 'em with the family and have a wizard on call. Besides, you hardly get four year old naturals these days. Tends not to come out till seven or thirteen. So no call for the old Prep school, and we can shut it down. Plenty of places give a general education these days. Pupil there shows signs of magic, no need to disrupt their education, we provide the expertise to help them deal with it in situ, and bring the lad to the University when he's eighteen. _

_Besides, a school for wizards? __**Dangerous**__ idea, to my way of thinkin'. Give adolescents access to spellbooks and magic wands and things, and there's no tellin' __**what**__ the little sods'll get up to. It'll all be School Houses with peculiar names, or just dam' silly ones, in competition with each other. We'll need to borrow teachers from the Assassins' School, just to keep order! _

_Besides, somewhere out there, some clever bugger's likely to have thought of it and copyrighted the idea. Don't want a lawsuit. Once lawyers are involved, it's as bad as inviting vampires into yer house, you don't get rid of 'em till all the blood's sucked. _

Ridcully thought back forty or fifty years.

_And there have been some pranks played under the existing system. _

_Silly little sod called Barry Spotter, or somesuch, got positively Messianic and thought he was last line of defence against the rising of a Dark Lord. Hmmmph, it was damned funny, but Henry played along with it and persuaded Loathesome Gary Dread__**(7)**__ to give Spotter a few scares. We all had a whip-round to pay off that particular Dark Lord to fuel Spotter's paranoia. Although Gary, good man, well, __**evil**__ man, but the sort of evil you can set yer watch by, he appreciated the joke and was prepared to do it for next to nothin' just to keep his hand in. Henry put that mark on his forehead in indelible magical pencil, I recall, and kidded him on it was a Mark of Destiny, and oh, those nights we spent workin' out the next challenge Loathesome Gary was going to give Spotter…. How nobody sniggered and gave the game away, I don't know._

_It all went well until Loathesome Gary got over-enthusiastic and teleported Spotter to that place where all the old-time monsters guard the approaches to Cori Celesti… ah well, wizardry is a dangerous profession. _

He doffed his pointy hat for a moment, in silent memory of a fellow student who hadn't even got to be a wizard.

_These days, somebody like Spotter would be banged up in the mental ward at the Lady Sybil, feet wouldn't touch._

Ridcully permitted himself a faraway long-ago smile.

_And then there was Hix, although he was after my time. I was a postgrad wizard then, as I recall… got a small stipend for elementary teachin' at the School. _

* * *

Being a locally resident student with his home in Dolly Sisters, John Hicks was permitted to be a day boy at the Wizards' School. His parents needed no persuading, after a native talent for necromancy coupled with the usual five-year old haziness about the dying process for beloved pets had led to the regrettable incident of the zombie cat, the one the family had thought safely buried under the flowerbed, lurching into the house and bounding, albeit jerkily, into the lap of the parish priest of Blind Io. All cats have a talent for discerning the lap of the cat-hater, whilst taking satisfaction in scornfully spurning the desperate affections of the person in the room who actually _wants_ to be cat-sat.

This instinct does not die after death, and maximum points are obtained, for a several-weeks-deceased zombie cat, unfresh from the grave, in choosing the most ornate priestly robes to leap onto.

Young John had got into trouble about that.

Despite his protestations that the reverend should have been _glad_ to see evidence of life after death, he talks about it so much from the pulpit on Octeday, Wizards were called. Tiffles the zombie cat was induced into a decidedly terminal final sleep and re-interred. As were several zombie guinea-pigs and an undead rabbit.

John was interviewed by a ring of benignly smiling robes and pointy hats. And ended up at the University, age five and a bit.

His greatest triumph came, age approximately fourteen.

_Now read on…._

* * *

Graduate wizard Mustrum Ridcully, twenty-three, accepted that part of the price he paid for being allowed to continue his postgraduate studies at the University was teaching duties. In the first flush of graduating as a Bachelor of Eldrich Lacemaking , in the pursuit of learning for learning's sake, his native energy and intellect had propelled him to the Fifth Level within two years. He had also belatedly learnt something of how University politics played out. Ridcully had realised that his upward progress through the Levels had attracted the unwelcome attention of Sixth, Seventh and Eighth level Mages. He had realised that they did not intend to shake his hand and congratulate him for his achievement. Rather, they were paranoid about a clever young upstart who was _too_ clever by half and who clearly intended not to stop at the Fifth.

Mustrum Ridcully realised that he had escaped notice as he passed up through the Second and Third, perhaps even into the Fifth. But the thing about Wizard grades is that every graduate passes into the First. The Second and Third are progressively less well populated, although still so numerous that a talented young Wizard may safely pass through them in anonymity. Besides, it's beneath the dignity of the most senior Mages to consort with the lowly grades. They are too far downscale to be any sort of direct threat to the lofty ones of the sixth and above.

But by the time the Magus has ascended into the greatly diminished number of those who survive to attain the fourth, and passed still further on into the rarefied atmosphere of the Fifth, the anonymity has gone, if only because there are so relatively few left - and they are within reach of the summit.

As the Mages of the Sixth and above well know, there are only a limited number of places, and as far as they're concerned, that's _us_, and we don't like company.

A wizard in Ridcully's position therefore needs allies and protectors. One of the few shining ones who can threaten and ultimately replace the Great, he is now fully aware the Great are aware of him and are preparing fireballs.

_And to think I thought it was only about disinterested objective academia, _he thought, glumly. He wondered how he could ever have been that naïve.

Mustrum Ridcully had a certain amount of protection through being a member of the Last Order**(8)**, the youngest of the eight Great Orders of Wizardry. At least, leading members of the other seven Orders would think twice about killing him - unless they'd first made sure it was OK by the Last Order's Eighth-level Head. Protocol and good manners dictated. But if the leadership of his own Order, including its increasingly nervous Sixth Level Mages, ever wanted to remove a threat…

Ridcully had looked for extra insurance against a "magical accident" or a scorpion setting up home in his boots.

Told he could discount some of the cost of his higher education against working for the university as a teaching assistant, Ridcully had inquired further. He had remembered the existence of the School, having been a pupil there. He had discovered practically no teaching Wizards wanted to brave its classrooms, and the Bursar was seriously thinking of luring teachers from the Assassins' School, as let's face it, only those evil buggers could keep order in a place like this..

He had grinned and said "perfect." No Senior Wizard was now going to risk killing off a rare asset to the university, a Teaching Assistant who had actually _volunteered _for the School… the University Council would not be happy. He could hide in the School, and clandestinely study for the Sixth Level in his own time. And they'd lose interest, seeing only a Wizard who had been warned off and who was going to stay at the Fifth Level and teach school. _Couldn't be better! _

* * *

John Hicks, aged thirteen, wondered who they were going to get next. His class had so far driven one member of staff to early retirement, one supply teacher had quit the profession, and a second had joined the Klatchian Foreign Legion to forget he'd ever been a teacher. _The next should be a pushover as well, he thought. _

And then Mustrum Ridcully walked in. The tall, broad, young wizard with the full red-brown beard and the ridiculous sticky-out ears looked comical at first. But Hicks had developed self-preservation and was looking behind the comical. _He looks like he could crack a walnut in his fists…_

He watched as 3B ignored the new teacher and carried on with what it was doing, which had largely involved being noisy, disruptive, and badly behaved.

They ignored him when he rapped his staff loudly on the floorboards.

They did not ignore him when he roared

"_**YOU WILL BLOODY WELL SHUT UP! RIGHT NOW!"**_

There was a dead silence as teacher and pupils regarded each other. Ridcully nodded.

"Now I've established I can shout louder than the whole damn lot of you put together, we can begin." he said. "My name is Mustrum Ridcully, I am your new form teacher, and these are me ground rules. Which are not open for negotiation."

Mustrum regarded his class, twenty or so young pupil wizards still too young for the university proper, but still its wards.

_High-spirited. Stupid but saveable. Let's get savin'. _

But even then, he wondered. _Is there an alternative to taking us in at four and institutionalising us? There must be! _

And so Form 3B was redeemed. Under Ridcully's firm hand, the rogues and rebels reformed themselves. They learned to like and respect him; he enjoyed schoolteaching, something he found light relief compared to preparation for attempting the Sixth Level.

For their part, the pupils realised a lesson from Ridcully could go anywhere, depending on what was on his mind that day. For instance, one hot summer day, a lesson on Natural History mutated into a lesson on How To Hunt, Shoot and Fish – or as Ridcully put it, How to Make Nature History. As the bell rang and the class made to go, he shouted

"Make haste, you fellows! Your next lesson is Mr Evans for Sport, and you know he doesn't like to be kept waiting!"

The class groaned. Ridcully smiled, knowing he now had an hour's free time to read Sixth Level Sortilege in peace and quiet.

For Hicks and 3b, it meant something else.

* * *

**(**1) OK, so eighteen year old undergraduates at any university also tend to do this as well.

**(2)** A small town in Borogravia

**(3)** A river in Überwald.

**(4) **And they hadn't been able to escape from each other since. Ponder Stibbons sometimes suspected the older wizards were descending into a second childhood together.

**(5) **Refer to _**Reaper Man**_, by Terry Pratchett.

**(6) **Refer to _**Equal Rites**_, by Terry Pratchett.

**(7) **Father of Evil Harry Dread, seen in _**The Last Hero**_ by Terry Pratchett.

**(8) **Some explanation. Seven of the eight Orders of Discworld wizardry take their names from the sort of high-falutin' highblown ritual societies common during the resurgence of Magic on the Roundworld, circa 1880-1936. Think of the Order of the Silver Star and Borthers of the order of Midnight (Aleistar Crowley) or their parodies in the works of Shea and Wilson (Brothers of the Hoodwink, the Sages of the Unknown Shadow, the Venerable Council of Seers). The Last Order, however, most probably originated like _**this:- **_

The name evokes the time-honoured cry of the British publican at closing time: _"Last orders, please!"_, which, as anyone familiar with British pubs will know, provokes a rush to the bar for several drinks each, closely followed by a desperate period of binge-drinking, trying to get it all down your neck in the half-hour or so while _"Time, gentlemen, please!"_ inevitably becomes _"Have you got no homes to go to?"._

it is possible that this Order started out as nothing more sinister than a student drinking club (given the affinity between students and pubs).

In the manner of these things, people who have been drinking together as undergraduates for over three years will see no reason to cease just because they have passed their final exams and become fully-fledged wizards.

As the group of socially-drinking wizards grew in power and experience, the thought many well have occurred, round about the tenth pint of Winkles Old Peculiar or Turbot's Really Odd, "Hey, why don't we form an Order of Wizards? That'll REALLY show those stuck-up miserable buggers in the Order of the Silver Star!" et c, et c.

One could see a young Ridcully being drawn to this sort of Order.


	2. The Showers

_**Whistle, and he'll come to thee, my lad…. 2**_

_A Discworld short. Inspired by incidental detail in __**Unseen Academicals. **_

Geraint Evans was not a happy man. In fact, he'd probably never really been a happy man, save for the occasion back home in Llamedos where the Stradis had won the Druidic Challenge Chalice against tough competition from other _troed y pheli _teams.

He had played that day, at the cost of the rest of his career in the game, but had sustained injuries forcing his retirement at the age of twenty-five. Like many another professional sportsman forced to retire prematurely owing to injuries, he had discovered he was unemployable for all but the most menial jobs, and had thus become a PE teacher.

Embittered and disillusioned, he had taken it out on the kids in the approved manner taught at the _Heinrich Bimmler Acadamie fur dem Sportstrainereren _in Überwald. Herr Bimmler, a man with a shadowy past, and his staff, had been very thorough.

Too thorough, in fact: Evans had been asked to leave Hugglestones for going too far with the boys, even by Hugglestones' standards, and the Assassins' Guild School had dispensed with his services after graduates who had passed through his hands had tried to take out a contract on him.**(1)**Forewarned on the educational grapevine, Thrasher's Academy in Pseudopolis had vaguely promised they would keep his details on file for when a suitable vacancy arose. Knowing a brush-off when he felt one, Evans had taken the only available vacancy at a disregarded and somewhat neglected school that was crying out for teachers. It wasn't necessary to be a wizard: just a qualified Teachers' Guild member. (This was, alas, a long time before the Teachers' Guild realised its potential power, encompassing as it did the staff of the Assassins' School, teaching witches such as Miss Perspicacia Tick, and Susan Sto Helit. The days when it could afford to employ PE Masters as its in-house enforcers were well in the future.)

"Get a bloody move on!" Evans bellowed, as the pupils of 3B and 3C jostled in a changing room small enough to comfortably accommodate only twenty or so. Hicks recognised this was a part of the sadism: enforcing nudity on young boys, many of whom were sensitive about things happening that they weren't entirely at home with, others who just _knew_ their lack of physical prowess would draw withering comments from the PE Master, and making them do it in such a small space with so few available hooks for hanging clothes that there would be the inevitable squabbles for room and some sort of decency. And above all making them do it at speed, rather than the leisure many would prefer. All part of the process for breaking them down, he reflected, as he undressed and scrabbled for his sports kit.

And then there were the _showers_ later.

Oh ye Gods, there were always the showers.

Evans lifted the whistle to his lips. A former teacher at the Assassins' Guild School, he still kept it on a length of purple ribbon denoting his teaching status. It had been a proud day at the BimmlerAcademei when the survivors of the Disc's toughest PE teacher-training course had graduated and had been issued the glittering prize, the coveted brass Whistle of Office.

Herr Bimmler himself, beaming with pride, with an Überwaldean brass band in attendance pumping out _Tomorrow Belongs to Me _and the _HansWeiselLied_, had shaken his hand and issued his whistle personally.

Bimmler had set up the Academie in a hurry after the last Dark War between Überwald and its neighbours had ended in defeat. Only one person had dared ask the director what he did in the war; Bimmler had twitched and in a higher-pitched voice than usual, had alleged he had been visiting his aged grandmother in Quirm at the time, so _ja,_ a lot of Uberwaldeans had also had aged grandmothers in Quirm who they all chose to visit at once, can a hundred thousand men not go to visit their old granny in peace?

Smiling benignly at the discomfort of the boys, Evans raised his beloved whistle to his lips.

_Any boy who has forgotten his kit will play in his underpants! _

Hicks counted under his breath. _Nobody_ forgot their kit these days. You played in your underpants that you had to wear for the rest of the day. Complete with mud from the playing fields.

Seven, eight, nine…. Right on cue. The whistle blew again.

_I got the note from your mother, Rincewind! The one who ran away before you was born, remember? Well, ill and bilious though you are, a cold shower should cure that! Go! _

Rincewind, another School boy who'd been a foundling at the University, whimpered and made a reluctant way to the shower. He was in 3C.

Pupils at a school for wizards tend not to be athletically distinguished. Hicks, as one of the average sort of boy, neither a gifted athlete nor one of the sick, lame and lazy, tended to avoid the worst of Evans' sarcasm by a careful process of being naturally fit, carrying no excess weight, and seeking to be one of the better players on the field whilst carefully avoiding real danger.

As he laced his boots up, he reflected that today was Llamedosian Rules Foot-and-Hand-The-Ball. Evans was _devoted_ to it. Even though it needed a snappier name.

And now the designated captains, Edward Rugby and Oswald "Ossie" Rules, the only two genuine athletes out of thirty, were picking teams. Both had decided long ago there was no point in doing the necessary thinking ahead to ensure the other side got the fat kid or the asthmatic kid. They had a gentleman's agreement that each got an equal number of the abler sort, like Hicks, and then they'd count up the rest and divide by two.

After that, the nightmare began.

The fat kids, bolstered by one or two of the abler, were directed into the scrum. On Hicks' side, this meant their hooker, Horace Worblehat, a youth gifted with exceptionally long arms and shorter legs, locked his arms around a flanking overweight prop-forward on each side, and the rest of the heavyweight scrum locked in behind him. Then they engaged the opposition, Worblehat grunting with the strain, in a long and almost mournful "Oook!" sort of noise.

Hicks had made it to fly-half: spared the scrum, but charged with feeding the ball in and watching for where it came out.

As he was faster and had better stamina than most pupil wizards, this suited him immensely. He could run with the ball in a fast and creditable manner, skipping past wheezing opposition members who were not inclined to tackle, looking good by comparison with their inadequacies, then surrendering it with a pass the moment danger (in the form of a bigger and better player such as Rugby or Rules) threatened. This earned him Evans' grudging nods, and spared him sarcasm and retribution.

The whistle blasted.

_You there! You useless fat boy! Yes, YOU! Show some BACKBONE, laddie!_

And the ritual humiliation went on.

_{{Blast}} Where the Hells is Rincewind?_

"Still in the showers, sir" a pupil said. "He said he'd prefer an hour under a cold shower…"

_{{Blast}} Fetch him!_

Followed by the Showers.

The Showers must have been devised by a plumber with a unique turn of mind, who knew _exactly_ what PE teachers wanted.

Ageing, creaking, with no intermediate setting between "scalding hot" and "freezing cold", capable of pumping out large flecks of rust and rusty-red water, which the pupils suspected was drawn directly from the Ankh. Most domestic showers usually have a flickering, miniscule, fleeting window of opportunity about them, where if the dial is turned and turned and turned with no apparent result, all of a sudden it becomes micro-sensitive and only the most tiny and delicate adjustments create hot water at just the right temperature. This appears to be a design specification. Miss that fleeting window and you are in the realms of Siberia or the Sahara again.

The changing room showers lacked this, and indeed the wheel that nominally adjusted temperature appeared to be rusted solid.

A deputation of boys had once petitioned the Arch-Chancellor, begging for the showers to be replaced. The Arch-Chancellor had smiled benignly at them, and said that by stunning coincidence, a gentleman called Bergholt Stuttley Johnson had been round that morning, offering his services to replace outmoded sanitary facilities at the University. I'll engage him to start with the changing rooms for Games, shall I? Those showers do need replacin', come to think, and Mr Johnson has some really exciting ideas…

Bad news travels fast. The deputation had looked at each other in horror, and sheepishly declined. Some cures are worse than the disease…

{{BLAST!}} _Get a move on, you horrible idle smelly bunch of soap-dodgers! Gerrunder that lovely fresh hot water NOW, Worblehat! You ungrateful little article! _

_{{CRACK!}}_

"Oooh c…." The rest of Horace Worblehat's protestations were lost in a muted scream, as he decided scalding hot water was nowhere near as bad as the wet towel the teacher was flicking out, and forced himself under it.

{{BLAST!}} _Whaddya mean, too hot? It's hot water, boy, it is a gift and a benison for you to scrub your horrible manky filth-encrusted hide clean! _

_It comes to something when it's the teacher hitting you with a wet towel, _thought Hicks, mutinously. He gritted his teeth, and scrubbed himself free of mud under a suddenly bland-cold stream of water. His body was technically clean. Now all he had to do was to live with the smell of the Ankh that had driven the mud away. No honest playing-field mud could withstand Ankh water.

And then, an added refinement, they were trying to dress, as the hordes of fifth-year boys who were taking the next lesson piled in to change, and the press in the room became unbearable.

_Would it kill them, would it really hurt, if we were allowed more space and a decent length of time to get changed at the start and the end of Games? _Hicks thought, as the older, bigger, boys started to methodically throw their clothes and bags outside so as to make room for themselves. Like most of the others, Hicks completed dressing in the road outside the changing rooms, with as much dignity as he could muster.

_He's doing this deliberately. It's just another way for Evans and his ilk to be sadists. Well, I want this to have changed when I'm older! __**(2)**_

"We've got to get rid of him." Rincewind said, mournfully, as they moved to their next class. There were nods and grunts of approval.

"Uuhhhhghk", said Horace Worblehat, nodding emphatically, and spitting out a lump of rust and grit he had inadvertently swallowed in the rush to shower and dress.

Hicks nodded. Evans must go. But how?

Muddy, dishevelled, and smelling of the Ankh, the pupils stomped wearily to their next lesson, Morpokian Literature with Miss McGrogann.

* * *

** (1)** Fortunately for Evans, the Assassins' Guild refuses to accept contracts on its teachers by ex-students. Lord Downey says it's not only a duty of care, it's the look of the thing. But when the entire graduate list for the year collectively tries to take out an inhumation contract on the PE Master, the situation did warrant a closer look at what the teacher had been doing to provoke such a revenge instinct.

**(2) **Lest you think I exaggerate, this is based directly on sports lessons at my old school and I have embellished not a word. Conversations with peers at other schools have informed me that this was not unusual for a British school, of any sort, in the 1970's. And in fairness, the head PE teacher at my school, mr Walker, was a good bloke who is still remembered fondly by those who knew him. But the rest of them had all been kicked out of the Gestapo for mental instability and excess sadism. The Bimmler Academy evokes Crewe and Alsager College, where all our PE masters seem to have been trained. What went on there….


	3. The Approved Reading List

_**Whistle, and he'll come to thee, my lad…. 3**_

_A Discworld short. Inspired by incidental detail in __**Unseen Academicals. **_

The University School staffroom was akin to that of all schools everywhere. It reeked of tobacco smoke, tweed, sweat and desperation. Mustrum Ridcully had heard of the fabled L-Space, the etheric field and extra dimension that allegedly linked all libraries everywhere. He idly wondered if there was such a thing as a T-Space, linking all school staffrooms in the Multiverse through the medium of hastily chain-smoked cigarettes and pipes loaded with trembling fingers.

"I tell you, Mustrum," Henry said, rolling a cigarette in trembling fingers, "When all this is over, I'm never, ever, going to get back in a classroom again. I shall make it my life's work to avoid teaching!"

Ridcully looked at his old friend with sympathy. Barely twenty-five, Henry had also been drawn into the School for the cash credits he could set against his advanced learning. He had made it to the Fourth Level, and had made his own survival bargain by unreservedly toadying up to a Seventh Level Mage in his Order.

He taught Lore and Ethics for Wizards.

Henry had also continued filling out.

Never a thin boy at School, Ridcully recalled, and therefore Ground Zero for the ire of the then PE teacher who considered fat a personal insult. Ridcully had been one of the hearties who had actually won the PE master's praise. Today, he was one of the few who Evans the Striped viewed as an ally, or at least a friend, in the staffroom.

But even having benefited from the system, Ridcully could dimly perceive the long-term consequences of a flaw in the philosophy.

_Bein' physically fit and carryin' no excess fat makes sense. When your body's healthy the rest of you is healthy too. Everythin' working at its best efficiency. This means you have to get out there and make that body work a couple of times a week. And physical jerks should be enjoyable. That's why I belong to the rowin' team and got me Browns. _

_But what are we teachin' 'em? Look at Henry here. Bullied and beasted and forced on the sports fields twice a week. He learns to see it as torture when it should be pleasant physical activity. The result is that when he leaves the school he can give it all up so as never to do it again so long as he lives. And look at him now, sculpting a body that would make two men proud. _

_What are we creatin' forty years down the line? A University full of three and four hundred pound porkers? _

He sighed, and focused on the spinster Literature teacher, Miss McGrogann, who was browbeating Evans as to whether those boys take showers _at all_ at the end of their sports lessons. Maybe you should allow them more _time_, Mr Evans, as let me tell you I need _every_ window open in my classroom when they come to me from you! Those young boys _stink_! It isn't funny on a spring afternoon!**(1)**

It wasn't mandatory to be a graduate wizard, nor indeed male, to teach at the University school. The two or three schoolmistresses were in any case of the old-time classroom monster type, and could maintain order just by standing there and glaring.

"It's hardly _my_ fault, is it now, miss McGrogann, if the boys do not take advantage of the facilities provided and choose to shirk and complain rather than take a healthy shower? " Evans protested. "If they cannot get cleaned and dressed in the time allocated, they must learn to be faster about it!"

Evans did not blow his whistle before speaking in the classroom, even though his fingers clutched it compulsively. Ridcully could have sworn blind he had once heard him talking to the damn thing, calling it his "precious". _But then, the whistle must be as bonded to a PE teacher as the staff is to a wizard. _

"I took a look in those changing rooms a day or two ago." Henry said, thoughtfully. "Do you know, Geraint, I really doubt anything's been done to them since before my day? And I remember rusty pipes hanging off the wall and water you couldn't control, you had to take it as it comes. WE used to come out of there alternately frozen , boiled red, and stinking."

"Well, some boys do have bad hygiene habits!" Evans retorted.

Henry replied, coldly, ticking points off on his fingers:

"And we never used to smell first thing in the morning when we bathed in dorm. Well, apart from Stinker Gresham, that is. We got an adequate amount of time to dress properly. Nobody hurried us. The water in the dorm showers came from the rainwater tanks on the roofs. Not from the river. It was heated to more or less the right temperature. We got soap to use. We had roon to move in. And that _showed_ we can be smart and clean and presentable. It was only your bloody showers that left us feeling filthier afterwards! That, and forcing forty of us into a changing room good enough for thirty and screaming at us to be ready in thirty seconds. _And_ sending the next class in to change before we were even half-ready to go! Are you taught all these things in teacher training prison?"

"School." Ridcully corrected.

"Beg pardon, teacher-training _school_, thank you, Mustrum."

"Well, yes. So your point is?" said Evans, perplexed. We've got to harden them up, make _men_ out of them!"

"Well, yes, old boy. Nobody's denying that." Mustrum Ridcully said, remembering to be patient to a more senior teacher. "Got to be done. But testing 'em to destruction, and giving most of 'em a lifelong aversion to healthy physical activity? Besides, Geraint, some of the Fifth and Sixth formers are big strong strappin' lads. What if you discover you've _really_ succeeded in making them into men, let's say if one decides to take a punch at you? If the big lad of eighteen who's getting' his adult muscle remembers how you treated him when he was twelve and puny?**(2)** You'd better hope none of 'em keep grudges!"

The bell rang for next lesson. The teachers left their argument for another time, and moved on to their next lessons.

"Thank you, Henry!" said Miss McGrogann, as Evans was the first to hurriedly leave. She picked up a stack of exercise books.

"Think nothing of it, Hilda!" Henry replied. "You know, show that man a determined front and he backs down!"

Hilda McGrogann, a spinster of a certain shape, scowled and pushed out her own determined front. Pupils speculated if that was _all_ Hilda.

"Yes. Like any bully anywhere." she said, thoughtfully. "Sooner or later he'll come a cropper!"

* * *

A week later, John Hicks measured his squelching length in a wet muddy field and wondered how any sane person could be forced to do this. He felt utterly miserable as the oozing filth found its way into just about everywhere it was possible to go, and groaned. He felt cold, wet, ill and totally out of sorts. Things were bad…

{BLAST!}} _Do you like it down there in the mud, boy? You have been lying down there taking a rest for long enough! _

Simultaneously, rough fingers grabbed him by the hair, tugged his head up, then slapped his face down into the mud again. Hicks spluttered as he ingested a mouthful of mud.

Things could get worse…

As he got painfully and shakily to his feet, he watched the retreating bulk of Mr Evans as he crossed the field to berate some of the other boys.

Hicks spat the mud out. He had learnt, in his years at the School, the essential life-skills of not letting himself stand out, of not volunteering or proposing himself for anything. Let other people lead and muck it up. But now, he had a cause to pursue.

Evans was going too far. He had to be stopped.

* * *

Old Charlie grinned. He could hardly do anything else.

"Kid, just be thankful this isn't Professor Flead." he said. "I knew him in the old days. Short-tempered cuss and too quick with the Black Fire for my liking."

John Hicks grinned. The idea, that he might be sponsored by a University department where an animated skeleton worked, was pretty cool. It had been a native talent for necromancy that had drawn the Wizards' attention to him in the first place. The Department of Necromancy kept an eye on him as a shining prospect and called him in for occasional chats, even though the lore said he couldn't formally start training as a Necromancer until he was eighteen. Knowing how much competition there was to enter the Department as an undergraduate wizard, Hicks was keen for them to remember him and keep his name fairly near the top of the list against his expected year of entry.

And Charlie was sympathetic, and appeared to like Hicks, which was even better.

Old Professor Meakin was worse. A thin spare wizard, against the growing modern trend for bulk and expanding waistlines.

He glared at Hicks and pursed his lips, barely visible behind a ffull moustache and beard. The effect was that of a malevolent goat. It made Hicks think of his Elementary Demonologie course, and depictions of the demon Bathomeths, The Terminally Indecisive (All Man, All Goat, All Woman… and All Man).

Meakin scowled at him through his beard.

"So what makes you want to be a necromancer, boy?" he demanded. "And don't even _mention_ the skull ring!"

"Well, sir, they say I've got potential.."

"True enough. I've read the reports of what you did to your family pets. But think you could revive a_ human_?"

"What have you got on the slab, sir?"

Meakin laughed, a dry, gritty, coffin-like laugh.

"Do you know, that's a prime example of what the Assassins' Guild calls _over-confidence_?" he said. "Hope you can justify it in four years time when we take you on. If not, it'll be worth watching! Well, young Hicks. You're accepted for this Department subject to orderly conduct, good grades, good teachers' reports, etcetera, over the next four years. While we can't officially start you off before you're eighteen, we can at least give some of the stuff on the reading list to whet your appetite. After all, your comprehension of Woddeley's Primer is rated at well above average, so maybe it's time for you to move on to some more _demanding_ stuff. Here's the reading list, you'll find it all in the library somewhere, and ye Gods, finding things in the Library is a test in itself! Off you go, we'll call you in now and again to review you, but a lad of your ability should make it to full Undergraduate in four years."

Hicks resolved the Library problem by paying Horace Worblehat to source the more difficult tomes for him. Horace, who wanted to specialise in Library Work in a Magical Environment, had realised early on that that this was a way of avoiding bullying – either the positive incentive of finding older, less intellectual, boys' books in the library and making himself useful to them that way, or the threat, as when he'd offered to show a persistent bully the way to a tricky shelf, and left him lost without a map in a section of the aisles suffering from a particularly persistent spatio-temporal anomaly.

It wasn't long before Horace emerged with an arm-load of books, which Hicks duly checked out.

Back in the dorm, he checked out the titles.

_Elementary Necromancy._

_Intermediate Level Necromancy. _

_Bloody Hard Necromancy._

_Summoning and Banishing Rituals._

_Geometry for Wizards: How to Draw that Tricky Septagram or Nonagram. Seven-Pointed Stars and Unicursal Hexagrams Made Simple. _

And the puzzlingly titled:

_Before you can Exorcise…._

Hicks knew, inside, the sensible course of action would be to start with the elementary primers and work up. But something about the enigmatically entitled _Before you can Exorcise…. _drew him in. He opened it. And started reading. And was still reading by candlelight later…

Professor Meakin read a memo from the Arch-Chancellor. It reinforced University Council decisions on a certain practice associated with the Department, and reinforced that its practice was strictly illegal in the city, save under explicit written sanction. It could be taught to student Necromancers, but strictly as a theory, and then only under close guidance. All books referring to the practice and teaching it were to be withdrawn from the general shelves of the library and placed on a closed list, access to which would be only on a "need to know" basis. Professor Meakin was to amend all course reading lists accordingly.

Meakin sighed.

_More bloody work. And one of the more satisfying aspects of the vocation, too. _

Had he stopped to think, he would have remembered he had sent a keen School student away with one of the old, unamended, reading lists…. And potent spell-books in the hands of a thirteen year old with a grievance could well cause trouble.

But Meakin was also, by default, the Licenced Black Wizard at the University, a man authorised, indeed sanctioned and expected, to cause trouble. When he did stop to think about the reading list he'd given young Hicks, a long slow contented grin crossed his face, and he waited to see how things would turn out. Any other wizard might have tried to get the books back. Not Meakin.

* * *

**(1) **I heard of similar arguments in one of my schools it was the French teacher, Madame Reckless, delivering the earache. (Yes. Really. That was her name). Once we heard other teachers were complaining to the PE Dept, we tried to use it as a lever to get better showers installed and more time to change. Still didn't work.

**(2) **This really happened. In a school I attended, two recently –leaving fifth formers came back one night and waited for the hated PE teacher to lock up the gym. Then they punched six kinds out of him. He never returned. Maybe time in borstal for assault made it worth it.


	4. The Whistle of Damnation

_**Whistle, and he'll come to thee, my lad…. 4**_

_A Discworld short. Inspired by incidental detail in __**Unseen Academicals. **_

_**Edited to remove all typos that point to intimaste female undergarments, ie "brass" comes out as "bras", or the last syllable of "abracadabra", and thus attracts an interesting kind of advertiser. But it's not that sort of story, Fraulein von Teufelstein notwithstanding...**_

_Incidentally, I've re-read__** Unseen Academicals, **__but unless I'm missing anything, there's no clue as to how Evans the PE Master got the nickname "Evans the Striped". Ideas, anyone? (And yes, the text hints Evans might have been a wizard, but doesn't say it for certain…so I think it's OK to leave him an untrained civilian in this fanfic. Besides, to become a wizard suggests a degree of if not brainpower, then subtlety of mind, which PE teachers aren't famed for having. Elsewhere, though, I've cleared up the paradox of an Assassin PE Teacher by making him a skilled killer with blunt instruments - medicine balls, Indian clubs, boxing gloves, deliberately defective gym equipment such as the gymnastic rings installed in my old school gym, et c.)_

Mustrum Ridcully would not have defined himself as a schoolteacher. It was just something he was doing, for now, for pressing expedient reasons. So he lacked the deep-down teacher genes that defined (or would in the future define) a Susan Sto Helit, an Alice Band, or a Joan Sanderson-Reeves.

But after six months of Form 3B, he was learning fast, and some things are common to all teachers, however variable in ability. Besides, he was schooled himself, in the paranoid ways of Unseen University, and being able to read a _mood,_ an _atmosphere_ or to decipher those words that were very carefully being unsaid was a survival skill. If you couldn't cultivate it quickly, then you didn't survive.

_Those buggers are up to something, _he decided, looking over the top of _**Seriously Advanced Higher Level Transmigration**_ to where the class were, on the face of it, quietly occupied in prep work.

_There's something I don't know. And whatever it is, it's going to happen soon. _He felt reasonably sure it wasn't going to happen to him, whatever it was. His mind ran down a likely list of targets. Hmmm. Form 4W had tried a basic _Invisibility of Apparel_ spell on young Miss von Teufelstein, their Überwaldean teacher. Scamps. The theory was, _Invisibility of Apparel_, also known as _Emperor's New Clothes_, once cast on a person, meant that the last person to realise their clothes had been rendered completely invisible was the person it had been cast upon. The subject could still feel the clothes they were wearing, as indeed they should, for the garments were still there. They would still believe they were decently dressed, as the invisibility worked only one way. People inside the clothing would still see it and believe it was decently opaque.. But people looking at 'em from _outside…_

That had been the theory, at least. Rag the new teacher, and give the inexperienced new girl the full treatment. But Fraulein von Teufelstein had taken good advice from Miss McGrogann and got hold of a basic amulet or two, designed to alert the non-wizard to spells being cast and to block any low-level magic being tried on them**(1)**. And the moment it had started happenin', she had taught the pupils some useful Überwaldean, alright, for e.g., that _Teufelstein_ translates as "_Pot of Demons_"**(2) **. They wouldn't try _that _again in a hurry… what wizards responding to the noise had discovered was a determined blonde Valkyrie in semi-transparent clothing going off like a small dragon, scattering terrified pupils in all directions. In this case, subsequent disciplinaries had been almost superfluous, although, strictly speaking, this was a spell that was banned to them until they were well over eighteen and preferably well over eighty.

_No, it's got to be somebody else. Henry, maybe? But he's an advanced wizard like me, so if any of the little sods throws a spell, he'll bounce it straight back at them. And Henry would not be a kindly man if attacked magically. No idea where to stop. _

_No,_ thought Ridcully. _Maybe I should do the pastoral thing. Invite the obvious ringleaders to me study for an informal chat, make toast and tea available, see what I can get out of 'em in private. _

He grunted, and glared in the direction of that little troublemaker Hicks and his pals Worblehat, Mackerel and the others. Hicks looked back with an expression of inscrutable innocence, of the sort that made any self-respecting schoolteacher instantly suspicious.

* * *

_At this point in the Text, I am conjoined by Lore to most earnestly admonish and conjoin the Student that this occult and arcane practice, while most efficacious if done with all due care and attention, should be performed with thoughtful care and Respect for the ethical issues involved and the Wellbeing of all parties involved. It should not be entertained if the only, nor indeed the Main, consideration be the Financial Emoluments available to the skilled practitioner of the Art of Exorcism which is the necessary consequence of the practice we are discussing, nor indeed if mere Convenience is the major Motive. For the temptation to the Immoral and Unethical will always be the low and base pursuit of mere earthly Gold, which should not be that of the academic and disinterested practitioner of Magic._

At this point, some previous user of the book had excitedly pencilled $$$$$$$! in the margin, and the author had gone on after the paragraph of stern admonishment to list several pages full of examples of how the Art had been abused, by the Unscrupulous and Worldly, to make large amounts of $$$$$$$! to the detriment of their souls.

Quite long, detailed, accounts, as if the author meant to leave no stone un-turned and no detail omitted in his condemnation of the regrettably criminal and base element in wizardry.

Hicks excitedly read all this, and grinned. Necromancy was going to be _fun_…

* * *

You're all good lads and damn' fine prospects to become fully fledged student Wizards, and I'm pleased with you all, you're comin' on a treat." Ridcully said, amiably. The five invited members of 3B mumbled their thanks, and sipped their hot tea, which Ridcully had obtained by bribing an Elevenses waitress to stop by his rooms and drop off part of the contents of her specially reinforced heavy-duty trolley. Cakes and biscuits were also available.

He had taken advantage of the occasion to gently grill his pupils about their intentions once they passed out of School and into the university proper. He had a suspicion that, if he decided to stay on and go for a Faculty place after getting his Seventh, he might well be dealing with some of these clever little sods in years to come, and it paid to ensure there'd be no bad memories of his time in charge of 'em. Besides, he could have used the odd kindness himself during his time as a pupil, some sort of acknowledgement from his teachers that they all belonged to the same species. It did no harm to relax the formalities now and again.

"But, and let me make this clear to you all. At this level you only learn to do the very basic, simple, magic. That serves to steer you in the right direction, and people like me monitor you to be sure you have what it takes to move on _when the time is right._ Your progress to undergraduate depends on you all keepin' clean sheets and not bein' caught misbehavin', d'y'hear? Any mucking around with advanced magic that you aren't meant to handle, if there's anythin' left of you when it goes wrong, you get sent down. End of your career as wizards, though the enthrallin' career of conjurer or thaumaturgist beckons !"

He glared around him to see if the threat – and the hidden message – had been understood. _If it were down to me, any School pupil who uses advanced magic and gets it right, that's showin' talent. I'd get him on an undergraduate course or two straight away, bugger his age._

And he was no further to finding out what they were cooking up among themselves. He'd have to wait and see.

* * *

Hicks and the seven selected co-conspirators met at midnight for a final run-through. Where they'd be standing, what their part in the ritual was, and which part of the text they were to memorise. Hicks very carefully did not rehearse the whole spell at once. But care was taken that they would be standing exactly at the points of a ceremonial octagram. Each participant would hold a card with nameless occult symbols drawn on it, which would normally decorate the points of that octagram. Again and again he adjusted their positions, and got them to remember exactly where they were standing in relation to each other. The book on Geometry for Wizards helped. So as to leave no trace that would alert the wizards to illicit magic, Hicks had the brainwave of cutting eight exactly equal lengths of string. If two wizards held a length just so and pulled it taut, then a second length of string was held between two other wizards and pulled taut, and so on around a circle of eight people, with each wizard holding two strings, then with all eight pulled taut, there was only one possible geometric shape eight people could form.**(3)**

A perfect closed octagram.

Which was perfect for the magic Hicks had in mind as a means of getting rid of Mr Evans.

* * *

Evans the Striped had taken to avoiding the staffroom. He felt resentful, for one thing, that he was doing his job to the best of his ability and it was attracting only criticism from the rest of them, bloody intellectuals, a good run in the wet would do them all good. Especially that disgusting fat porker Henry. There were some kids you just could not reach, and he was certain Henry had been one of them, soft fat unathletic disgrace. He excluded Mustrum Ridcully from this criticism, as Ridcully was one he quite liked, as they shared certain interests and were in full agreement that the boys should be made physically fit and given physical challenges.

His lonely jog around the University campus had taken him to the Great Hall.

He'd always thought this was a waste of a perfectly good space. All they used it for was _eating_, for goodness sake. Over-eating, if you asked his opinion. They were trying to undermine his work, that was clear: this growing emphasis on big dinners and minimal physical activity was nothing short of _sabotage_. The fact it might have been a necessary reaction against his form of physical education did not enter his head for a second as he entered and looked around him.

_He'd made a perfectly reasonable case for converting this big, high, space into a gymnasium and getting the most out of it. Those tall bare walls cried out for climbing bars. Oh, those old stained glass windows would have to go, of course. Let in too little light, and in any case with medicine balls flying around, there's be too much broken glass, make the place look untidy. And climbing ropes, up to those rafters! The Assassins' Guild School had pupils who could climb a free-hanging rope in twenty seconds. Probably too much to expect from some of the miserable specimens at this school, but oh! The joy of making a fat boy try to climb a rope! Herr Bimmler had emphasised the job satisfaction to be got from that!_

Evans got down and started doing press-ups.

_They told me they have the annual Convivium in here. I'm not an unreasonable man, they can carry on having it in the school gym, but I want a new floor laid. The degree conferral, well, they can put tarpaulins down to spare damage to my floor. Woe betide anyone walking on __**my**__ gymnasium floor in outdoor shoes!__**(4)**_

**Twenty-two,-twenty-three…**

_And they turned it down because they said it was impractical!** (5)**_

Evans suddenly realised he wasn't alone. Legs were surrounding him. Pupil legs.

* * *

Hicks had realised they were going to have to do it soon. Mr Ridcully was getting suspicious and had taken to extra dorm checks after lights-out. Fortunately there was no damning evidence, like a chalked octagram on the floor. They had been sent back to bed with a stern word. But it had been a close call.

Watching Evans go into the Great Hall, Hicks and his associates had followed. They only had the twenty-minute morning break to pull this off in…

* * *

Mustrum Ridcully watched from the staffroom window as Hicks and several other boys from 3b disappeared out of the school yard as if by common agreement.. It was clear something was happening. He nodded, excused himself, and left the staffroom.

* * *

"What are you boys doing here!" Evans demanded, through his press-ups. He did not notice them taking positions, but he did notice the hicks boy taking a book from his pocket.

"You can get out! As I'm in a good mood I will not penalise you!"

_What are they doing with that string… and laying those pieces of card out on the floor? _

Hicks began to intone a ritual.

"As it pleaseth thee or it pleaseth thee not, spirit of Geraint Evans, let it be known that ye have no choice in this…"

Evans began to feel dizzy.

The actual mechanism of the ritual was in the counterpoint chanting from the other seven participants. Much later on, Ponder Stibons would theorise, with HEX, that this set up a harmonic field that generated an eight-sided octagonal cone of power, contained in this case by taut string making a regular octagram that was every bit as good as a chalked line. HEX would map this effect and project it on an omniscope: it looked, coloured in, like one of those swirly pointy tower roofs you saw on Kremlins in Far Zlobenia, where eight different-coloured facets swirled up together into a vaguely rounded but even structure that billowed out then came to a pointy cone at the top. The whole looking like an architectural ice-cream cone.

"_I-O, I-O, I-A-O!" _chanted Pennysmart, invoking the Higher Group Mind.

"_A-bara', ka'd'a'brah!" _chanted Mackerel, drawing down the Magickal Force.

"_Ook, ee-ook,ee-ook, ook, ook!" _chanted Horace Worblehat, uniting the Lower Soul, generally visualised as a large forest ape, with the Higher Mind.

And Geraint Evans felt life and power and sentience slip away. With a last despairing cry of "_You boys will…" , _there was an implosion in the air, and a cloud of settling dust on the stone-flagged floor.

Mustrum Ridcully burst in to see a makeshift octagram – full marks for improvisation there, you boys – and the tinkle as a long brass whistle fell to the stone. Some things need no explanation.

Students and teacher looked at each other for several long seconds. Then Ridcully broke the silence.

"Well. Looks as if we'll be advertisin' for a new PE teacher, I see."

He took stock. A whistle, a pile of dust, and...

"Put that string away. You know you can't properly make a ceremonial octogram with a piece of string. Somebody's course notes on the floor? Pick 'em up, lad looks untidy."

He gestured Hicks to give him the book. He leafed through it and whistled.

"Insorcism, eh? And Evans ain't exactly dead, he's in…"

He looked to the whistle. Lustrous, gleaming brass, eight inches long, and oozing sinister sentience.

"Nobody touch that. I'll deal with it."

Then he picked it up.

"I'll parcel it up with his effects. You, boy. Go and find a cleaner's cupboard. Get a dustpan and brush and some sort of box."

Mackerel ran off to obey. Ridcully looked benevolently at the students.

"Chap's evidently had a magical accident of some sort. There's a place where we store the remains in the hope that one day, technomancy might allow us to rescusitate. Otherwise, you fellows, it's _murder_. You hear me? Now, I'm going to take the view that there's no possible way third year School students could do something like this and pull it off. Nor do they normally gain access to forbidden books that university lore says should not be on open library shelves. Insorcism is a crime against the Lore, you hear me? No messin' with it. "

He glared at them for a few seconds. Then something like a grin crossed his face.

"Wizards die here every day." He said. "It's a dangerous profession. So you heard the scream, ran in, but there was nothing you could do to save Mr Evans. Tsk tsk. But accidents happen. Now sweep him up into that box and give him to me. Off you all go and try to learn from this."

The boys turned gratefully to leave.

"Oh, and Hicks? I'll be watchin' you." Ridcully concluded.

* * *

Ridcully deposited Evans' ashes in the Intensive Neglect room, assuring the wizard in charge there was no great need to rush over this one. The whistle went into Evans' room, which Ridcully took great care to lock thoroughly behind him. And Evans the Striped was forgotten by everyone, including Ridcully, for the best part of half a century...

* * *

The inquiry into the disappearance of Evans the Striped was perfunctory and disinterested. The Arch-Chancellor noted that he had incurred so much hostility that a list of suspects would stretch three times round the Great Hall, and anyway we all have better things to do. Take a leaf from the Watch, and call it suicide, and close the book, and lthen et's have lunch. Smashing. Inquest adjourned.

* * *

And the boys of 3B, disappointed that PE lessons had not been cancelled, waited in the cold to see who was covering the lesson. At least they'd had time to change at leisure today.

"_Alright, you fellows!"_ a familiar voice boomed. _"Twice round the field, bit of a warm-up to get ourselves ready, then we might play a bit of lacrosse. I've got the sticks and helmets waitin' for you!"_

It was Mustrum Ridcully.

Who, Hicks had to agree, at least respected your right to change in good time, and never laid a finger on anyone, even if he couldn't do anything about the showers.

Things could be worse…

* * *

**(1) **The University Council had agreed this was acceptably prudent for non-wizards working with students. They had to attract and keep schoolteachers somehow….

**(2) **Yes, in this context, _"-stein_" usually means_ "mountain". _But Ridcully is working from his own specialised and personal form of Überwaldean, in which the word _"Stein" _means_ "container for beer, made out of pot with a lid on, used for quaffing purposes". _In this case, not a beer-mug where you'd care to open the lid and allow the contents to come flying out.

**(3) **similar strategies have been used, with people and ropes, to form those bewilderingly exact geometric shapes known as corn circles.

**(4) **Did your school have this rule as well? Was it a hanging offence to go into the gym in outdoor shoes? Ours did. If an assembly was held in there we had to take our shoes off, and there was always some kid in three-day-old socks whose feet reeked…

**(5) **At my old school, there was an ongoing war between the Art Department and the PE Department over the fate of the school's older, 1920's, gym, that even in the 1970's had come to the end of its useful life and had been supplemented by a brand-new purpose built sports hall. Art and Music said, perfectly reasonably, there was no need for _two_ gyms. Their grand plan was to have the older gym converted into a two-floor dedicated arts and music block, allowing for studios, galleries, and soundproofed practice rooms where a boy could learn to play the tuba in peace without teachers in neighbouring clasrooms banging on the wall for the bloody racket to be turned down. The PE Deaprtment objected stenuously to this, and since the Deputy Head was a former PE master, fought a rearguard action for a long time. The old gym was not converted to an Arts and Music faculty until the late 1990's...


End file.
